Notes

Alta California.  The region was claimed for Spain in 1542 by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, a skilled and intrepid navigator of Portuguese origin. He sailed up the Pacific Coast on a voyage of exploration from Baja (Lower) California to as far north as Northwest Cape near Fort Ross, about 70 miles north of San Francisco. He passed Monterey Bay, the Golden Gate and San Francisco Bay without seeing them. Cabrillo's voyage preceded Francis Drake's visit in 1579 to the California coast just north of San Francisco Bay by 37 years, and the founding of the first English settlement in North America at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607 by 65 years.

Juan de Cabrillo.  Fifty years after Columbus landed in the New World, soldier-navigator-explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo led the first European expedition to the shores of what is now the state of California. The voyage, which ended with Cabrillo's death, marked the beginning of recorded history in the Western United States.

Little is known about Cabrillo's early years. Even his nationality is uncertain; most biographies describe him as Portuguese, but in his exhaustive 1986 biography Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, historian Harry Kelsey writes that Cabrillo appears to have been born in Spain, "probably in Seville, but perhaps in Cuellar." His date of birth and parentage are also unknown, but events in Cabrillo's life lead Kelsey to believe he was born of poor parents "around 1498 or 1500," and then worked for his keep in the home of a prominent Seville merchant. The final mystery about Cabrillo is his place of burial. He died on January 3, 1543 off the coast of southern California, but his burial site is unknown; Santa Catalina Island, San Miguel Island and Santa Rosa Island have all been suggested.

Cabrillo's adventures in the New World apparently began as a boy in Cuba where he served (perhaps as a page) in the army sent by Spain to pacify the country. He grew up to serve as a squadron commander and shipbuilder in Herman Cortes expedition of conquest in Mexico beginning in 1519. Later, as a merchant-adventurer, he took part in several military campaigns in Central America, including Guatemala, where, through the allocation of land and the use of Indian slave labor to mine gold, he became one of the regions richest men.

In 1542, Cabrillo was entrusted by the viceroy of Mexico, Antonio de Mendoza, to lead an expedition up the coast of New Spain (what is now Baja California) to seek new opportunities for settlement and trade. It was also hoped that the expedition would sail on to discover either a new route to China, or a passage or river connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

"No one then had any clear concept of the shape of the Pacific basin or of the great distances involved," writes Kelsey. "It was generally assumed that North America was either an extension of the Asian mainland or very close to to by Battista Agnese, generally thought to date from around 1550, show the coast of Central America and Lower California meandering lazily westward and a little north toward Asia. California is not much further from Asia than it is from Central America." When Cabrillo's men returned from their voyage in 1543, they insisted that the fleet "had come very close to the coast of China."

Cabrillo's expedition, Kelsey emphasizes, was a "money-oriented venture, and special note was to be taken about trade goods, the things that sold well and items that sold poorly." Of the three ships that formed Cabrillo's armada (other accounts put the number at two), the flagship San Salvador was built and owned by Cabrillo, who stood to profit financially if the mission succeeded.

"Generally, the expedition was to adopt a guarded but friendly attitude toward the natives," writes Kelsey in describing the likely instructions received by Cabrillo. "If other vessels were sighted, the expedition was to avoid them and also to avoid doing anything else that might endanger the safety of the ships or the men. For example, if the commander had checked carefully and found the natives friendly, then the men might go ashore and make a full reconnaissance, taking careful notes about the people, their language and religion, the quality of the soil, the houses they built, and whether ether country is an island or mainland"

On June 27, 1542, the Cabrillo expedition left the harbor of Navidad, Mexico and turned north up the western coast of Baja. The armada is estimated to have numbered 200-300 men, including seamen, soldiers, a number of black and Indian slaves, some merchants and their clerks, and one or more priests. The ships also carried horses and cattle.

The only surviving account of Cabrillo's voyage is based on a report compiled by a notary, Juan Leon, in 1543 at the request of authorities investigating Cabrillo's death and his aborted expedition. Leon's report, which included interviews with several crew members, has never been found; what exists is a summary of the report made by another investigator, Andres de Urdaneta, who also had access to logs and charts from the expedition. The first account of Cabrillo's voyage to appear in print was by historian Antonio de Herrera early in the 17th century, long after the explorer's death.

What the record shows is a voyage marked by many encounters with California natives (as a rule, more friendly than unfriendly), innumerable occasions to claim land for the crown of Spain, and the first reliable charting of the California coast.

Three months into their journey (having become the first explorers to sail the length of the Baja peninsula), the Cabrillo armada recorded its first landfall in Alta or Upper California. It was a "sheltered port and a very good one" which Cabrillo named San Miguel in honor of the saint whose feast day was a day away. San Miguel is present-day San Diego. Earlier they had passed the Coronado Islands, which they named Islas Desiertas.

Traveling north up the heavily populated coast, the voyagers encountered a large and beautiful island which they named San Salvador, after the expeditions flagship; we know it today as Santa Catalina Island. Continuing on, they sailed into present-day San Pedro Bay; seeing thick clouds of smoke from burning chaparral, they named the area Baya de los Fumos, or Bay of Smoke. The ships anchored overnight in what is now Santa Monica Bay. Next they passed the islands we know today as the Channel Islands; Cabrillo named them Islas de San Lucas, after the Apostle Luke.

Imagining the Channel Islands scene as the expedition arrived, Bruce W. Miller writes in Chumash: A Picture of Their World: "From the shore many Indian canoes flashed across the blue surface of the channel waters, first approaching the Spanish caravels, then circling the gallant flagship swiftly and with apparent ease. Each canoe had 12 to 13 tanned, muscular Chumash. Most were naked wearing only a waist string, some wore skins or cloaks of sea otter. They were friendly and offered fish to the Spanish strange new world had come to the Chumash and though little changed by this first visit, the Indians almost certainly took this event as significant, for the Spanish explorers must have seemed truly powerful to them." Anchored off Goleta Point, Cabrillo's men were brought so many fresh sardines that they named the nearby villages Los Pueblos de Sardinas.

Further north, the armada ran into stormy weather, missed San Francisco Bay and finally turned back upon reaching the Russian River, taking shelter in what is now Monterey Bay. On November 23, 1542, the bedraggled armada arrived back at Santa Catalina Island for wintering. A series of running battles took place between Cabrillo's men and the island natives. When a party sent ashore for water came under attack, Cabrillo organized a relief party and rowed ashore. "As he began to jump out of the boat," one of his sailors recalled, "one foot struck a rocky ledge, and he splintered a shinbone." Cabrillo was taken back aboard ship where a surgeon treated his wound, but it soon became affected with gangrene. He died on January 3, 1543. The armada, now commanded by chief pilot Bartolome Ferrer (or Ferrelo), attempted to complete the voyage, but coastal storms proved overwhelming. Battered and leaking, the ships headed back to Navidad, Mexico, arriving April 14, 1543. They had been gone almost nine months, had left no settlements, had found no passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific, had discovered no new route to China. But New Spain was no longer the great mystery it had been prior to Cabrillo's voyage, and future explorers would profit from his trail-blazing.

For many years, Cabrillo's discoveries went unrecognized and unappreciated. As Kelsey notes, "no copies of the expeditions logs and maps reached Spain before 1559," 16 years after his death. "Before that date the royal cosmographers in Seville were unaware of the discoveries made on this journey. None of the place names were entered on the pardon general, the official maps kept at the Casa de Contradiction.." The earliest map to draw directly upon information brought back by the Cabrillo expedition was dated 1559. And not until 1769 did Spain send soldiers, missionaries and settlers to Alta California to underscore the claims made by Cabrillo some 227 years earlier.

Jamestown Colony.  In June of 1606, King James I granted a charter to a group of London entrepreneurs, the Virginia Company, to establish a satellite English settlement in the Chesapeake region of North America. By December, 108 settlers sailed from London instructed to settle Virginia, find gold and a water route to the Orient. Some traditional scholars of early Jamestown history believe that those pioneers could not have been more ill-suited for the task.

The City of Santa Fe was originally occupied by a number of Pueblo Indian villages with founding dates between 1050 to 1150. The "Kingdom of New Mexico" was first claimed for the Spanish Crown by the conquistador don Francisco Vasques de Coronado in 1540, 70 years before the founding of Santa Fe. Coronado and his men also traveled to the Grand Canyon and through the Great Plains on their New Mexico expedition. Spanish colonists first settled in northern New Mexico in 1598. Don Juan de Oñate became the first Governor and Captain-General of New Mexico and established his capital in 1598 at San Juan Pueblo, 25 miles north of Santa Fe. When Oñate retired, Don Pedro de Peralta was appointed Governor and Captain-General in 1609. One year later, he moved the capital to present-day Santa Fe. New Mexico was part of the empire of New Spain and Santa Fe was the commercial hub

Pueblo Indians. From the Spanish word meaning "village" or "town". A term used collectively to designate those Indians of central New Mexico and north-east Arizona, of sedentary and agricultural habits and dwelling in permanent communal stone-built or adobe houses, as distinguished from the surrounding tribes of ruder culture and roving habit. The name is strictly a cultural designation, without linguistic or proper tribal significance, although in former times each group of pueblos speaking the same language or dialect appears to have constituted a loose confederacy, or "province" as termed by the Spaniards.

Hudson's Bay Co. A corporation chartered (1670) by Charles II of England for the purpose of trade and settlement in the Hudson Bay region of North America and for exploration toward the discovery of the Northwest Passage to Asia.

St Louis. The site of the city was chosen (1763) by Pierre LaClede for a fur-trading post. To honor Louis XV of France, it was named for his “name” saint, Louis IX of France. Transferred to the Spanish in 1770, it was retroceded to France in the time of Napoleon I and then sold to the United States along with the other lands of the Louisiana Purchase. St. Louis, the gateway to the Missouri valley and the West, was the market and supply point for fur traders, mountain men, and explorers (including Lewis and Clark). The town grew rapidly after the War of 1812, when immigrants came in numbers to settle the West. St. Louis grew to be one of the greatest U.S. river ports; even after the railroads arrived in the 1850s, the river steamers remained extremely important.

California Missions.  The California missions were started because the Spanish king wanted to create permanent settlements in the area of the New World called Alta California. The decision to create Spanish missions in California was political as well as religious. The Spanish government wanted to gain a foothold in California before the Russians pushed southward.  

Father Junipero Serra, a well-respected Spanish Franciscan priest who had worked in Mexico for seventeen years, was put in charge in 1767 when the Franciscans took over from the Jesuits. 

In 1769, Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola and Father Serra made their first expedition to establish the California missions.  All were established near the coast, and they were located to be a day's walk apart. Over a period of 54 years, 21 California missions were established by the Spanish, spanning 650 miles along the El Camino Real.

The Spanish Fathers' major purpose was to convert the local Indians to Christianity. At each Spanish mission, they recruited neophytes from the local Indians, brought them to live at the mission and taught them Spanish, farming and other skills. Many Indians willingly came to the California missions, but the Spanish mission system was not kind to them. Some were badly treated by the Spanish soldiers. Many others died of European diseases to which they had no immunity.

Some missions were more prosperous than others, but all of them raised wheat and corn, and had vineyards. They also raised cattle and sheep, and sold leather goods and tanned hides.

The period of Spanish prosperity was short-lived. When Mexico gained independence from Spain, they could not afford to support the California missions, and in 1834, they decided to secularize the missions and sell the land. The Indians were offered the lands first, but they either did not want them or could not afford to buy them. Eventually, the land was divided up and sold. A few missions remained in the hands of the Spanish Catholic fathers, but many others were used for all kinds of other purposes. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln returned all the mission lands to the Catholic church, but by then many of the California missions were in ruins. 

In the twentieth century, many of the neglected California Spanish missions were restored, or rebuilt. Most of them are still active parish churches today, and they have excellent museums and interesting ruins.